Daddy Crush on Christopher Plummer or When Girls Cloud A Gayboy’s Life

Years: 1972, 78, 81, 82 and 84.

Ages: 8, 13, 17, 18, 20.

Place: San Diego, CA USA

I’m gay. I’ve never made bones about it. I remember being fascinated by boys from a very early age. Didn’t know what that meant back then, but yeah, big queer boy me. Boys like Vincent, Gregory, Raymond, Neil (sweet holy Jesus, NEIL – I crushed HARD on that boy) as well as others in my class and at school.

After my year of kindergarten at Highlands, I was able to be relocated from the first grade on at La Presa Elementary which was directly across Jamacha Boulevard from our house (Jamacha, if you’ll recall from my previous posts, is the main four lane thoroughfare that ran perpendicular to our street – the one where people drove 50 mph down that street and kids would still dash across it to short-cut not having to walk an extra couple of blocks further to an actual traffic signal cross-walk). Youth being eight bags of stupid and all.

Anyway, my life at La Presa was a mixed bag. For the most part, I loved going there. The teachers I had were all amazing in their own way – even Mr. Tibbitts in my sixth grade year who had his growly bear (read: brown) suit that when he wore it we were on notice not to fuck with him that day ’cause he was in a baaaaaaaad mood. But yeah, for the most part my years at that school were fairly golden.

I had friends. Well, kids I got along with. I wouldn’t say we were “friends” in the strictest sense. More like agreeable playmates. Because even then I was singled out as being different. I was not only bright and delighted in making my thoughts known (even back then I didn’t hide my opinions) and loved to demonstrate my mental prowess with the teachers and class, but I was always, always, always trying to be nice to everyone. It wasn’t easy. Somehow I broke a rule for boys that I never knew existed. I dunno, maybe I missed a boyhood meeting and that memo never made it to my house with a great big ol’ “where the fuck were you? we had some serious shit to discuss …” attached to it?

Anyway, my über smartypants ways didn’t win me any big awards with the guys at my school. I was an insufferable know-it-all, I suppose. But I think most gayboys are. It’s our defense mechanism that is trying desperately to kick in and somehow send a big ol’ signal that you better not fuck with us. When all it does is say please, fuck with us. [You can insert your eye roll here – ’cause it’s what I’m doing.]

I was also artistic in every sense of the word. I knew every song from all the classic Broadway musicals – like The Sound of Music (I was a snob about it, too – only the Julie Andrews version. Mary Martin’s singing drove me up the fucking wall – even at six or seven). I just couldn’t handle Ms. Martin’s constant sliding into every damned note she sang. It wasn’t a style, it was a sloppy way of singing, is what it was.

But I knew how to sing them all (King and I, Carousel, Flower Drum Song, and My Fair Lady, you name it – I had them ALL memorized).

I got to demonstrate this early on in life when in the third grade, Mrs. Sowers, who I thought was a dead ringer for Barbra Streisand (and she could play the piano REALLY well – an added bonus for a burgeoning gayboy like me!), would have music time and I sang my ever-loving-heart out. I knew passages to songs that no kid in their right mind would ever know. Sore thumb doesn’t begin to describe it. I was a boy soprano of the highest order. Right up there in that vocal register that Julie loved to sing. Lord, it’s a good thing I hadn’t heard Queen of the Night by Mozart at that stage or I’d’ve driven my family bonkers. I could easily assail into that whistle register that some boy sopranos had in spades. I was right there with them. And I sure as hell knew how to use it.

This was always how I saw Mrs. Sowers. I think it had more to do with my obsession over Barbra Streisand than anything else. Though Mrs. Sowers did share the same haircut as this pic and her nose was fairly similar.

Anyway, Mrs. Sowers loved that I was a precocious little singer and didn’t mind in the least to lead the class on Do-Re-Mi and even sang the introduction that Julie sings before the part everyone else knows so well …

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Yeah, the kids hated my ass whenever we got to that song. Me? I loved it. I got to be Julie for fuck sake! I had SUCH a boy crush for Christopher Plummer as the Captain. Still do. I watch that movie for him, don’tcha know. The songs are the icing on the cake (and yeah, even to this day I can’t watch the damned movie without singing along). But when the Captain is on the tube, yowsah – I am on full-on crush mode.

Damn, he is a fuck stud of a man. Beautiful doesn’t begin to describe him.

I could go on for days about this man.

See what I mean?

Anyway, the overriding point I am trying to make here was that my queerness was set from a very early part of my young gayboy life. I didn’t run from it. I embraced it – once I knew what “it” was.

So where do the girls come into this? And how did they cloud the issue? First off, let me clarify something here that I think is very noteworthy: sexuality is a very sticky wicket (yeah, I went there with the double entendre), in that even when you know who and what you are, there are always exceptions. Recently both Ricky Martin and Jussie Smollett, both self identifying gay men, said that they were definitively gay but wouldn’t rule out a relationship (sexual or otherwise) with a woman. That’s were the queer factor kicks in for we gayboys. Now, admittedly, not every gay boy feels this way.

Antonio Biaggi – gay porn actor and producer

I’ve had small conversations and FB exchanges with an establishedgay porn star (and prolific business man), Antonio BIaggi (if you don’t know who he is I recommend you look him up – ’cause uh, yeah, yowsah doesn’t begin to cover him). I’ve followed him on Facebook and follow his twitter and blogs. He’s not only a prolific gay porn star, but he’s a great human being and a champion of animal rights. But even he, a self-identifying gay man in a sex oriented business (he recently branched out into fashion), recently posted he went to a straight strip club and found one of the girls there hotter than shit and he said he’d entertain “doing her.” So see? Not so cut and dry.

The point I am trying to make is that even when you self-identify as something, the lines are often blurred on where gay ends and something else begins. Not for every queer boy, but yeah, it happens. And that’s where I was – er, uh, am. It still is.

That was me in my early queer kid years. Girls, especially tomboy girls, confused the hell out of me. I had two such friends/playmates I’d hang around with at recess: Norma and Silvia. Both were definitely girls in that they didn’t have short hair cuts (they both had long hair – Norma’s was dishwater blond and Silvia’s was a very curly dark brown). They were nice to me and we got along. Oddly enough, they both came from a very strict household and generally wasn’t allowed to see or go over to other school friends houses once school was over. That didn’t mean I didn’t break that rule with them at their parent’s house, we just had to be clever about it – doing so before they came home from work.

Norma wasn’t overly pretty – in fact you might say she was rather non-descript. She had straight eyebrows (literally, they had NO arch to them at all), they were slightly bushy (this was before Brooke Shields made it a thing with Blue Lagoon), and she wore clothes that had been in fashion at least a few years before. Never anything current. I remember when she first came to our school in the third grade she wore a simple dress that definitely had a thrift store look about it that was a drab brown with four pockets on it – each pocket had a word embroidered on it – Handy, Candy, Daddy, Mommy. The kids teased her mercilessly by singing a made up song – “Handy Candy Daddy, Handy Candy Mommy” – I am sure she hated it. She never wore the damned thing again after that day.

Anyway, Norma (and Silvia) were sort of havens of safety for me. I could hang out with them at school and eventually I would go over to their houses and, by the sixth and seventh grades, I’d go there and just do stuff.

But here’s where the other part eked its way into my queer world. Both girls kind of got me excited. And by excited I meant in that way that young boys get excited about being alone around girls. I admit it. I wanted to fuck them both. I’d seen Playboy by this time, I wasn’t so off the fucking mark I didn’t know what went where and why. But here’s the deal that took me a while to sort it: looking back I can see that they both were very boyish in their body types. Neither girl were buxom in the remotest sense. They had very boyish looking bodies. Norma was the friskiest of the two – Silvia was far more prudish as she was a Latina from a very strict Catholic family. I was raised Catholic, too, so I got that. Silvia also had four older brothers that I did NOT want to tangle with. So I kept things cool there. Didn’t mean I didn’t want it, though.

But Norma, yeah, for some odd reason she turned my crank. I’d heard from other guys that she was already having sex. She was thirteen at this point. Her father was a piece of work and her mother was a vicious bitch so I can see where that aggression to do something was probably eating away at her to stick it to her parents. Sex, I guess, was a good way to go. We messed around a bit. She seemed to like me – god only knows why, it was pretty clear I wasn’t into girls in that way. Every kid who knew me sort of knew it. Yet, there I was, with a girl, and we were – close.

To be honest, I don’t think it meant anything to her. Not really. She was already frisky with boys at that point. I think I was just another boy for her to flip the bird to her parents (she got pregnant fairly early in life, too). But she wasn’t the only one.

I even had a girlfriend in high school for about a week (okay, it was a bit longer, but, my point being: it was brief). She was a lovely Italian girl whose entire multi-generational family lived within a one mile radius of her house. Talk about intense. The first time I went to her house they were all there. Yeah, no pressure. Thank God my parents brought me up with some solid good manners. I liked Carolina. I truly did. I just didn’t know how to tell her that my head and heart wasn’t into her sort of plumbing. It was a very awkward time for me. I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. We went to a school dance together – Sadie Hawkins. The pictures are somewhere at my parent’s house and she gifted me with a silver bracelet that was engraved. Jesus, no pressure there, either.

My sister had a friend in high school (this was in my senior year and my sister was a freshman) whose name was Stacy. Stacy was hot for me – again, why, I have no idea – because at this point I was definitely GAY with big bright letters and flashing light bulbs and feathers and sequins. Hell, at that point I was going out to under-aged queer clubs.

She fascinated me. I couldn’t sort it. Why me? I was obviously gay. Now, mind you, this was at the height of the eighties New Romance movement. I was already gender bending it with guyliner and makeup. Boy George, Peter Burns and Adam Ant were my fashion gods. Maybe that was it. She was into my shit because I was already out and proud and had makeup to prove it. Nothing came of it. But it did garner my attention.

So fast-forward it a bit and there was a girl at the nightclub I went to – Studio 9 – that was a definite gay club. Boys would show up there clutching their girlfriends hands so tightly while the rest of us gayboys were placing bets how many days of coming to the club that he’d ditch the bitch and be sucking face with some other boy. It happened – A LOT…

Well, Rebecca was into me in a big way. I liked her. She was extremely pretty and very fun to be around. She’d often snake up to me, we’d dance off and on. She was close. She was cock blocking me with other boys, that’s for sure. I don’t know how or why but one night we decided to go driving around for a bit of a break. I think it was to get some booze because she had a fake ID. She was 20 and I was 18. She had dark blue-black hair that was cut in that Vidal Sassoon cut that was all the rage for girls in that era. She was glam, had a strong fashion sense, and was very forward with her sexuality. Somehow I found that alluring. Anyway, she suggested that we go get something for the gang to drink and I said I’d go with her. In truth, she wanted to have sex. We ended up in the queer section of Balboa Park in downtown San Diego (an area that was a long one-way loop that the fags and dykes called “the fruit loop”). It was a big cruising spot for gay men (and dykes hung out there, too, during the day) to hook up and have sex either in the bushes or in the lone bathroom at the far end of the loop.

Somehow we managed to drive there and park. We made out. She was very aggressive. It sort of turned me on. I don’t know if it was because we were in the gay part of the park and there I was making out with a girl or not, but we never did the actual deed. A lot of heavy petting and foreplay (rubbing through clothes and such) and yeah the windows got steamier than fuck. But no real shit happened. It wasn’t like I didn’t want it. I was bone hard through it all and she was definitely into my junk.

I can’t deny it, she turned my crank. But it didn’t happen. I think I broke it off. She giggled, we kissed some more and then went and got the booze and hooked up with our friends to party the night away in the parking lot behind the nightclub. She stuck by me most of the night. Then she never went back again. I never saw her. I knew she was close to turning 21 so maybe she just gave up the underage thing and moved on. I don’t know. I never told anyone about it. I never have even mentioned it in passing to either of my long term partners (my boyfriend of 10 years or my current husband of 20). This is the first time I’ve put it out there in the universe. But yeah, girls do sometimes eke into a gayboy’s life and muck things up.

The odd thing about it all? Back when I was sixteen and I read the Peter and Charlie series by Gordon Merrick, he introduced a woman into Peter and Charlie’s romance and made it a threesome (there was even a child in the mix later on in the series and both queer men had fucked her that night (Charlie’s perverted idea and he made his boyfriend Peter do it so they wouldn’t know whose kid it really was (the story was set in the early part of the 1900’s when it was not possible to test for paternity)). Anyway, I remember becoming so incensed when Charlie did that to Peter – forced him to have sex with her (he got Peter all hot and bothered and then had him fuck her to climax) that I kept inwardly screaming NO, NO, NO! I hated that she was involved in their lives. I was distraught because it was telling me that via Charlie’s POV that they could ONLY be a happy queer couple if they did the straight thing between Charlie and this woman he’d brought into their lives. To this day I can’t even write or say her name because those emotions were so strong back then that I still get pent up about it.

Yet I find it a bit odd that sex is one thing for me, love is another. You can have both at the same time and it’s fucking fan-tab-u-lous, but I can definitely separate the two (something I’ll address in another post later on in this series). Sex and love are exchangeable and transferable in my world. I don’t require both to get it on. I have it within me to fuck someone or someones (which has happened on multiple occasions – again, for another posting) and not have it mean anything other than the pure hedonistic pleasure of it all.

Anyway, each time I was with a girl after I read that in the Charlie and Peter series – some part of me would think of that woman in those stories fucking up their perfect gay romance that I would put the skids on whatever girl had crossed paths with me. Odd how literature can affect you like that, isn’t it? Books have always done that for me. While I love film (and television), books still rule my world. I’ve always been a lover of words. They were my first boyfriend, really. As a pre-teen, there were moments where sex was definitely eking its way into my world.

Sex and sexuality isn’t so cut and dry. I don’t self-identify as bi or pan. Not that I have anything wrong with those identifications. I just know the only person I could love has to be a man. It’s just deeply entrenched in who I am. But, like Ricky, Jussie and Antonio, I know that there are exceptions to those rules where sex is involved. I rail at the whole “gay for you” trope (even if I have my own story about that – which I’ll detail in another post). But I’ve come close to the opposite, too. There were girls in my past that I could say, with a slight nod to it being fleeting and probably wouldn’t stick in the long run – that I could “go straight for you.”

I watch porn. I watch it regularly. I get off on it. I make no bones about that, either. No shame in it from my perspective. I interact with porn stars from time to time as well. It’s a part of my queer life (hell, it’s no surprise when I say men in general are drawn to porn – I think we’re wired to be very visually stimulated). Testosterone is a very potent thing. I even watch and get off on straight and bisexual porn and have found it very stimulating. Trans porn, too – though that’s a bit harder to find. I am not so rigid where sex is concerned. But love? Now that’s another matter altogether.